On to The Strip

After our morning at Hoover Dam we returned to our hotel for a shower and a nice nap in our cool room. Is there anything better than crawling into a freshly made bed after a nice shower for an afternoon nap and know that you don't have to make the bed or wash the towels? Plus there is the added bonus that and you can even leave your wet towels on the floor and no one yells at you!

being showered and rested we did stop by the pool side bar to take advantage of our coupons for two free cocktails complement of the hubs status (LOL!) Under ordinary circumstance it was buy one get one free so that was maybe a total of a whopping $8.95 they dished out in incentives.

I had a Blue Margarita, I am not sure what Blue Curacao liqueur is but in the search I just did it is orange liquor that is blue, in any event it made for a good cocktail!


We contemplated dinning at Delmonico’s or The Mesa Grill but after taking a look at the menu online we decided that we would rather not drop over $150.00 for dinner for three and opted for dinner at Benihana Village right there in the hotel. We had more complementary coupons courtesy of the hubs status for $25.00 off two steak and Lobster dinners.


Personally I think we would have been better off going to Mesa Grill as we spent nearly that same even with the coupon. Live and learn……

After dinner we strapped on our walking shoes and grabbed a taxi, they wanted $5 bucks a head to take the tram down to the strip and the taxi fair for all three of us was just under $12.00 so it was about the same with the tip for the driver.

The strip was a mass of people. It reminded me of our time in San Francisco the day we went to Fisherman's Warf the day the Blue Angles were there.



For me one of the highlight was the Venetian Hotel!


The inside of this hotel was simple amazing.

I’ve never been to Venice but the ornate gliding and intricate painting just gave you the flavor of being  surrounded by that elegant and ancient European flare!
 






What I find amazing about these next two pictures is that although it was about 9:30 in the evening and we were completely inside the hotel. You actually felt as if you were walking outside in the early evening. The glow and the realistic clouds pained on the ceiling gave the illusion of strolling along a venetian canal.

It was so very vivid!

And if ya were wondering…an intimate ride for two in a gondola was ONLY a mere $64.00!

 
Silly me, I just thought this was an interesting landmark outside one of the hotels, but it is actually a restaurant. The Eifel Tower Restaurant, it felt like we were in Paris for the minute it took us to walk past it.

Our last stop was the Bellagio, I didn’t take the picture below, but I wanted to show you what it looked like. I have to be very honest and share that I was not very impressed with the interior of the Bellagio. It was not in any way comparison to The Venetian.


 
Here is a very blurry snap shot of my attempt to photograph The Bellagio….


We experience Las Vegas in all it’s glory, the seedy side as well.

It was hard to miss.

A few of the more disturbing images were of a young woman probably in her late teens or maybe her early twenties sitting on one of the walk ways with her head hung down to the ground. Her belly swollen out in the late stages of pregnancy with a small cardboard sign propped again her protruding tummy which read:

“ Pregnant, Broke and a Long way from Home!”

Talk about tugging at your heart string as I glanced around to check that my own daughter was not being carried way by the pressing crowds. I wondered about this young woman's family and where they were and how she had come to be in that situation. I said a brief prayer for her and her unborn baby as the swiftly moving throng of people propelled us past.

The second unavoidable assault upon the senses was the endless lines of young men and women with there small business cards. They lined just about every corner you came to! They would take the cards and very loudly flick them against the palms of their hands in an effort to get your attention. I tried to stay focused on the goal of getting from one place to another but the continual “Flap, Flap, Flap” achieved it desired goal of gaining your attention every few feet.

On the cards, I never took one personally, but you could see them littered all over the street as they were randomly handed out then carelessly discarded as trash. You could see the heavily made up faces of the scantily clad young women printed on the front of the cards.

I found it so very sad that the fact that most of the cards wound up on the street to be swept away with the trash to be a very accurate metaphor for how most of these women were viewing their gift of femininity and the blessing of intimacy the God has given us with our husbands. It was very very sad!

It also made for very interesting talking points for me and the DD later on that evening as we discussed several of the unavoidable things that we can upon. Never waist an opportunity for open and honest communication I always say. As long as she is willing to talk to me about these types of thing I am going to make myself available no matter what the topic may be or how uncomfortable it may seem.

All in all I found Las Vegas to be the perfect picture of it’s given name of ‘Sin City”, it defiantly lived up to it’s name in all it entails. If you could afford it you could buy it, if you couldn't t afford it you could get a line of credit. If it had a fancy label it was available for purchase. It was a giant designer shopping mall for the rich and famous. The casinos were open for business all day long and the drinks were flowing no matter what time of day it was. It was a tribute to the “Worldly” and an even bigger tribute to “Excess”  as it had to be flashier and more extravagant that the next guy and it was endless.
As we drove away from Las Vegas I was glad to be leaving it behind. I can now say I have been to Vegas and really I have not desire to go back unless you have two complementary tickets for the Blue Man show that you just want to toss my way!

So I will close with my main reason for even wanting to go to Las Vegas in the first place.

The highlight of the evening was the water show at the Bellagio. The stunning visual show put on buy The Bellagio made up for the somewhat lacking impact of it’s interior.

After about 5 tries I finally managed to get the video to upload.

Is anybody else experiencing issues with uploading to YouTube or Blogger????

In any event here it is. It is very difficult to see but in the very beginning there is this really cool low fog that come seeping up through the surface of the water. It was like watching a low rolling fog come in over the water. The actual water show start about 50 second into the video.

There was this tiny woman who was standing in front of me and a short while into the show she decided to leave and offered me her spot at the rail, the video shakes a bit while I am moving up to get a better view.

It was awesome to see! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My only regret is that we only got to enjoy it one time.

Any suggestion on how to overcome upload issues with YouTube would be greatly appreciated, as I have not had any success what so ever since I acquired my new camera! 

We wanted to stay and watch the show at Treasure Island but as it was 10:00 and we were exhausted and the next show was not until 11:30 we decide that we could die happy with out the experience.

We grabbed another cab and hit it back to our hotel to fell exhausted in bed.

My feet were aching and I was glad to be out of the pres of humanity and in a safe cool room resting for the next days adventure.

We move on to our next stop and I move on to the next post!

Blessings
R